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Showing posts from October, 2021

Review: "Eve & Adam: thanks for your collab" Takes a Scalpel to Pathologizing Pleasure

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Eve & Adam: thanks for your collab Written by Kasper Klop and Morwenna Spagnol Directed by Morwenna Spagnol Presented at Collab NYC 309 Starr Street, Brooklyn, NYC October 28, 2021 Image by Samir Djafer In a high-ceilinged cinder-block space in Brooklyn, a man clad only in a pair of sweatpants stands on a small platform. Into the expectant silence that fills the room after the music fades, he breathes deeply. Once. Twice. Again. Thus begins Eve & Adam: thanks for your collab , performed by multimodal artist and actor Kasper Klop with dextrous and expressive physicality. The Eve & Adam series comprises site-specific performances that consider social impact on the individual and draw on the legal, cultural, and political contexts of the performance location, with previous installments having been mounted in Manhattan as well as in Paris, Edinburgh, and London. Kasper Klop in  Eve & Adam: thanks for your collab. Photo credit: Nailah Raab Eve & Adam: thanks for your c

News: FRIGID New York to present 10th Annual Gotham Storytelling Festival, Nov. 2-14

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  FRIGID New York to present 10th Annual Gotham Storytelling Festival November 2-14 at The Kraine Theater FRIGID New York will present the 10th Annual Gotham Storytelling Festival at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and Bowery), November 2-14. Performances will also be available to livestream from home. Tickets are available on a sliding scale ($20 in-person; $15 online, suggested) and are available for advance purchase at www.frigid.nyc/tags/gotham . Not even an ongoing pandemic can stop the tenth annual Gotham Storytelling Festival: This year’s fest will touch on the good, the bad, and the most outrageous of 2021. Whether you’re looking to escape into someone else’s story, to commiserate with an artist, or to dive into what makes this year so insufferable, Gotham has something for you. Audiences are invited to join legendary hitters and new friends for an international event that’s sure to alleviate some of the year’s aches. This year's shows are as follo

Review: In "Echoes in the Garden," a Conflict Between Roots and Branches

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Echoes in the Garden Written by Ross G. Hewitt Directed by Aimee Todoroff Presented by American Bard Theater Company at the Chain Theatre 312 West 36 Street, Floor 4, Manhattan, NYC October 20-November 6, 2021 Cheri Wicks, Sarah Young, and Arthur Aulisi. Photo by Basil Rodericks Having closed the same night it opened in March 2020 due to COVID-19, Ross G. Hewitt's Echoes in the Garden is in bloom once again at the Chain Theatre. Drawing on some of Hewitt's and his mother's own experiences, the play primarily chronicles a 1962 visit, the first in several years, by Bronx resident Ruth (Sarah Young) to her Pennsylvania parents and the house where she grew up—rendered in an impressive cutaway-design set by Mike Mroch—but which also incorporates scenes of household memories stretching back to 1922. Within the tumultuous context of the early Civil Rights Movement, Echoes in the Garden probes reverberations of love and loss spanning three generations. Near the beginning of the

Review: Don't Sleep on Snow White-Era Disney Tale "A Venomous Color Part 1: The Fairest"

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A Venomous Color Part 1: The Fairest Written and directed by Cameron Darwin Bossert Presented by Thirdwing at the wild project 195 E 3rd St., Manhattan, NYC October 19-24, 2021 Sivan Gordon-Buxbaum as Frances. Courtesy Karen Greco PR As entertainment sites across the internet catalog which Disney-owned superhero films slated for release in 2022 and 2023 will now be coming out slightly later in 2022 and 2023, A Venomous Color Part 1: The Fairest , a new play written and directed by theater company Thirdwing's founder and Artistic Director Cameron Darwin Bossert, takes audiences back to a time before Disney dominated the entertainment industry—1937, to be exact—for a richly drawn and thoroughly absorbing look at the women in Disney's ink and paint department as they crunch to finish Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . Thirdwing's innovative focus on both live and streaming theater means that the multi-episode part 2 of A Venomous Color , subtitled Burbank and dealing with the

News: Pandemic Romance "You're the Measure of My Dreams" Premieres Oct. 15

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  Beginning October 15, Sour Grapes Productions will present You're the Measure of My Dreams: A Pandemic Romance in Two Acts , the first full-length play by Aidan Matthew Turner and Nathan J. Cusson’s second outing as a director in New York City, at The Vino Theater in East Williamsburg. In You're the Measure of My Dreams , new-formed love and potential surrounds Nolen and Eunice after a meeting in the park during quarantine. Their beliefs and values crash down around the couple and his roommates as they try to develop an app that questions free will. They all must decide what they believe and value to bring order to this new found chaos. The performance dates are: October 15th at 7:30pm October 16th at 2pm and 7:30pm October 23rd at 2pm and 7:30pm November 12th at 7:30pm November 13th at 2pm and 7:30pm And The Vino Theater is located at 274 Morgan Ave., Brooklyn, NY. CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS There will also be a filmed version available for a short time in December for those w

News: Immersive Choose-Your-Own-Adventure "Assemble" Returns

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  Flying Leap LLC has announced the return engagement of Assemble , created by David Blackman, Talya Chalef, and Jess Kaufman.  Assemble , a self-guided, socially distanced solo experience is currently playing a limited engagement at a location in Brooklyn that is revealed post-ticket purchase. [ Updated 11/9/21:]  Performances are Thursdays through Mondays (every 20 minutes, 4 people per slot, 5-7 p.m.) through the end of the year. Tickets are $40 and are available at www.projectassemble.org . After a successful initial run in January 2020 as part of The Exponential Festival,  Assemble has  returned to everyone's favorite superstore with even more questions than before. Assemble is a guerrilla, choose-your-own-adventure performance that transforms the mundane spaces of a well-known store in Brooklyn into a series of worlds, fantasies, and meditations. Participants download an app to their phones and are invited to join Jane as she considers the cost of her choices. At 40. Amidst

Review: The Multiplicity of (the) "Matriarch"

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Matriarch Written by Jesse Bliss, Sigrid Gilmer, Sheila Govindarajan, Tamar Halpern, Taylor Lytle, Roger Q. Mason, and Diane Rodriguez Created and directed by Jesse Bliss Presented by The Roots and Wings Project and Houston Coalition Against Hate via streaming October 8-30, 2021 Bahni Turpin in Remember This . Courtesy Emily Owens PR This past weekend's nationwide marches for reproductive justice represent only one of the more visible signs of the fraught position of women living under patriarchy and its intersections with and support of other oppressive hierarchies. Co-presented by California-based theater company The Roots and Wings Project (RAW) and the Houston Coalition Against Hate (HCAH), Matriarch brings together a selection of short single-actor works that create a probing, polyvocal tapestry of life and lives in our heteropatriarchal nation. Pre-recorded from live performances at the MKM Cultural Arts Center in Los Angeles, Matriarch will stream online, with its pre

Review: Solo Show "This Would Look Good on You" Is Impeccably Tailored

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This Would Look Good on You Written and performed by Orietta Crispino Directed by Liza Cassidy Presented at Theaterlab , 357 W 36th St., 3rd Floor, Manhattan, NYC September 23-October 3, 2021 Masking and proof of vaccination required Orietta Crispino. Photo credit: Gaia Squarci In the white space of Theaterlab, This Would Look Good on You 's racks of clothes, hanging handbags, and cubbies of neatly paired shoes hint at an upscale boutique, but the collection here is personal, in all senses of the word. The second of a trilogy of semi-autobiographical solo shows by Italian-born actor, director, artist, and Artistic Director of Theaterlab Orietta Crispino, This Would Look Good on You employs items of clothing not only as aesthetic objects in themselves, with the white space setting off the luxuriousness of many of the fabrics, but also as touchstones in an impressionistic jaunt through an individual woman's life and character. As Crispino, playing a version of herself, unpacks s